


Fizzled Spark

by Theatricuddles



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:53:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theatricuddles/pseuds/Theatricuddles
Summary: Aubrey loses her magic, but Dani doesn't seem to mind.
Relationships: Dani/Aubrey Little
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Fizzled Spark

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in AU where Ned lives and the group doesn't cross over to Sylvain. I might come back to this AU at some point.

Aubrey was running out of magic.

Whenever she wasn't actively trying to shove this horrible slime thing off, chasing after the five of them in the Cryptonomica van, the sensation was there. It lingered in the back of her mind, like a panic attack you just kept holding at bay until you could find a closet to cry in.

She knew why. She knew exactly why. When the portal shattered, stranding the remaining sylphs in Kepler with nothing to sustain them, she’d managed to enchant some more water, keep everyone alive until Janelle found a way to reconnect the portals. Aubrey was missing Sylvain, in very many ways.

She felt another few ounces of her magic ebb away as she conjured up some wind to shove the abomination off course.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” she called to Ned as the van screeched around yet another tight curve.

“Unless you want us veering off into the trees, no!” Ned shouted back.

Duck was anxiously clutching the handle on the side of the car. “I can’t do anything if I can’t get close to it,” he said, reaching for Beacon and thudding his head against the window of the car for his trouble.

Dani turned to Aubrey as she looked back at the thing that was swallowing up a few more trees. “Aubrey, what do we do?” she asked. Sometimes, when the sylphs were sad, or angry, or afraid, the glamours keeping them from being revealed slipped a little. Aubrey could see Dani’s fangs worrying her bottom lip.

“Just hold on,” Aubrey said, wracking her brain to think of something that could hurt it. Lead it into the lake? Water might help, but if it absorbed some of the water and got bigger, it would just fuck them over even more. And it had burned when she’d brushed against it earlier- what if it poisoned the water for everything in the area?

Aubrey sighed with relief as the thing veered off through the trees. It made all of them wince as they watched the abomination crush more of the forest, but at least it wasn’t threatening to grab them anymore.

Thacker suddenly got to his feet, almost hitting Aubrey in his haste to grab his walking stick and leave the car. “It’s heading towards the lodge,” he said.

The next few minutes were hard to remember.

Aubrey had heard Dani say, “I know how to stop this,” and before Aubrey could stop her, grab her, plead with her, do _something,_ Dani was already running towards the abomination.

Aubrey tried to keep pace with her, but at twenty feet away, all she could really do as her girlfriend threw herself towards the abomination was cry out in pain.

For what it was worth, Dani had been right. Dani used the slight amount of magic that Aubrey had taught her to summon some magic from Earth itself. It had made the abomination practically cave in on itself. Or at least, that was what Aubrey had been told afterward.

But at the moment, all she’d really been able to think of was Dani, slime forming angry welts across her skin, already unconscious from the pain.

Thacker picked Dani up, her body going limp in his arms, and Aubrey sprinted over to him. He tried to tell her something else, but it was a little hard for Aubrey to make out any kind of words over the thrumming of her own heartbeat.

_Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani._

Aubrey gripped Dani’s hand with all the gentleness of a vice, summoning the last remaining reserve of her magic. She couldn’t live with herself if she let her go like this.

_Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani._

It was working. Dani’s labored breathing was continuing, and that was all Aubrey needed to know. She imagined her magic like threads, drawing Dani closer to her, wrapping around her body, around her very being. It would be enough, it had to be.

_Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani._

Aubrey wasn’t sure where her magic was coming from, in this moment. Sylvain was silent. Any residual power had to be coming from her, from her own body. That was okay. She could live with that. If she even lived through this at all. Distantly, she felt Duck’s hands grab her, but that felt like it was happening seven star systems away.

_Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani._

Blackness was starting to press in at the edges of her vision now. Aubrey felt like she’d just run through the entire forest, but if she didn’t keep going now, it all would be for nothing. Her whole body strained with the effort of maintaining her magic. It didn’t matter.

_Save Dani. Save Dani. Save Dani…_

A familiar pair of green eyes was the last thing Aubrey saw before the darkness claimed her vision.

*

Aubrey woke up to the sun streaming into the window.

Well, “woke up,” was a bit of an exaggeration. Aubrey felt the light warming her upper torso and saw the sparks dancing in front of her eyes before she realized she was awake.

Her mouth tasted like bubblegum that someone had been chewing for an hour. Across from her, she made out Mama, sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Aubrey Little,” Mama said as she got up.

“Mama,” Aubrey said. Or tried to. She lost the word to a dry cough.

“Do you know what happened after what you did?” Mama asked, drumming her fingers on the end of the bed.

Aubrey couldn’t form words. She settled for shaking her head.

“Well, for starters, you collapsed in the dust. The other pine guard members thought you were dead for a moment, and your temperature dropping suddenly didn’t help that.”

“Mmm,” Aubrey said quietly, not making eye contact. She appreciated Mama, she really did, but what was she expecting? Aubrey was a member of the pine guard. Possibility of death came with the territory.

“How do you think Dani felt, wondering if you were dead?” Mama asked.

Aubrey didn’t say anything. Besides the fact that no words could convey the apologies she meant, her mouth was still too dry to form words. She swallowed, exhaled.

Mama shook her head. “You’re not invincible, Aubrey. And I don’t know if you didn’t know, or didn’t care about the consequences, but if you don’t care for your own sake, at least think about what you’ll leave behind. The rest of us were afraid for you, too. And I’m telling you all this now, because you’ve been asleep for three days, and it’s only as of four hours ago that Dani’s left your side for longer than an hour even once. And she’s not going to tell you that, because she’ll be too busy hugging the life out of you to tell you. So I felt like somebody should.”

Aubrey hung her head as she rubbed the quilt between her fingertips. A moment later, Mama was setting a drink of water in her hand. She took a big gulp from it before she tried to speak again.

“I understand that, Mama,” she said. “But if the choice is whether or not Dani would be here with us, I think you know what I’m going to choose.”

Mama sighed as she carded her fingers through Aubrey’s hair, where they almost immediately caught on a snarl in it. “I know that, honey,” she said, smiling down at her. “But you can’t blame me for trying.”

A few seconds later, Aubrey saw Dani as she walked through the door, and attempted to struggle out of her bed and over to her girlfriend. That was a big mistake: as soon as she tried to push herself to her feet, dizziness immediately settled over her.

“Aubrey,” Dani said, catching Aubrey’s hands as she settled her back into her bed. “Do you need some water? Broth? A blanket?” Dani said as she let go of Aubrey’s hands for a second.

Aubrey still couldn’t really speak very well, but as Dani let go of her, it felt like her whole world had lurched off its axis.

“Stay,” she whispered, reaching out for Dani’s hand.

Dani grinned down at her. “I’m just going to the kitchen,” she said.

With a sigh, Aubrey let her go. After a period that was probably five minutes but was, in Aubrey’s opinion, far too long, Dani reappeared in the doorway.

Aubrey began to sip from the bowl of broth Dani pressed into her hands. “No chance we have any ice cream?”

Dani smirked. “Strict diet of clear liquids for the next two days. Mama’s orders.”

“She would, too.” Aubrey set down her bowl as she assessed her options. Moving was definitely out. While she would love to be carried from place to place by her beautiful girlfriend, it would tire out Dani within twenty minutes, and she was never going to stop hearing about it from Jake. Without a way of moving, all she could really do was lay in her bed and try to find something to do. She thought of her phone for a moment, but then remembered the only thing on her bedside table was the glass of water and a lamp.

That clearly left only one option: looking up at the ceiling and slowly dissolving of sheer boredom.

Well, that was slight hyperbole. Without having six things to think about, Aubrey’s brain would clearly start leaking out her ears within the hour, but she _could_ still look at Dani. Which had become one of her favorite hobbies since first coming to Amnesty Lodge.

Aubrey caught the faint sight of bandages under Dani’s t-shirt, but didn’t want to ask about it. Dani would probably only respond by fussing over Aubrey more, and that was the last thing she wanted.

Dani, noticing Aubrey’s eyes tracking her, reached out to her.

Dani’s hand was in Aubrey’s. All was right with the world again.

“What are you looking at?” Dani asked.

“You,” Aubrey said, not taking her eyes off Dani.

Dani nodded once, almost to herself. “Then what are you thinking about?”  
  
Aubrey licked her lips as she considered. “Y’know how when you’ve been chewing bubblegum for ten minutes, it starts to taste like nothing? I’m wondering what that nothing tastes like,” Aubrey said, taking another sip of her water.

Dani smiled. Aubrey wanted her to keep smiling, so she kept talking about candy. As many kinds of candy as possible. Aubrey didn’t know how Dani was able to listen to her ramble like this, not when Aubrey could barely stand to hear herself ramble like this. But it was nice to be able to talk to her. It was familiar. And the longer she kept it up, the longer she could pretend that absolutely nothing was wrong. At some point, Dani got up to get some water, and Aubrey held it between her hands.

“Mama wanted me to talk to you,” Dani said quietly once Aubrey took a few minutes to drink some water, “about your magic.”

Aubrey exhaled a long breath through her teeth. “There’s nothing, Dani,” she said. “I wish I could tell you that it was okay, that I’m going to get it back. But it’s just… not there. It’s like I’m trying to move a missing limb. I don’t…I don’t know,” she said, already having trouble speaking paste the lump in her throat. “Maybe I’ll get it back?” she said quietly. “I’m useless without magic, Dani. I don’t… I don’t want-”

Dani shook her head. “The spell you cast is still holding, even though you haven’t refreshed it in a month now. We’re fine. We don’t need your magic.” She smiled, but Aubrey just felt her stomach sink lower.

“So you don’t need…me,” Aubrey said before she could stop herself.

Dani looked into Aubrey’s eyes for a long moment without saying anything. Then: “Can you stand?”

“Not really,” Aubrey admitted.

“Can I carry you?” Dani asked.

Aubrey swung her legs out of bed, one foot and then the other. Her legs were so full of pins and needles that her legs wouldn’t take her weight, and thumping her foot against the wood floor did nothing.

“Go ahead,” she said quietly.

Dani picked her up, and the two of them walked slowly through the lodge. Dani slowly settled Aubrey into a chair in the kitchen and walked off. She got back with an opened package.

Aubrey looked down into the package to see a whole pile of letters. There were letters from the residents of the lodge. There were multiple from members of the Pine Guard. She counted at least three from Dani. She looked up, eyes welling over with tears.

“You love me,” she said. The tears began to spill over.

“Aubrey, everyone at the lodge loves you. You’ve been a smiling face, a shoulder to cry on, a confidant, a helping hand, and a close friend ever since you showed up. You’re not getting rid of us that easily,” Dani said, a hint of her fangs showing as she dropped her glamor and ran a hand through Aubrey’s hair.

“You _love_ me,” Aubrey repeated through her tears as she grabbed Dani around the waist and hugged her close.

“...Yeah,” Dani said as she rested her hand on Aubrey’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Candlenights present for Icy. Thank you for your patience with this, and thank you to SyllableFromSound for your help with beta.


End file.
